We mourn the passing of William Lucy, AFSCME secretary-treasurer emeritus, and a revered labor, human rights and civil rights leader

William “Bill” Lucy, who served as secretary-treasurer of AFSCME for nearly four decades and was one of the most respected and revered Black labor leaders in the world, died at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 90 years old. Lucy was a heavyweight of the American labor movement in the second half of the 20th century and a fierce defender of civil and human rights. In 1968, he traveled to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, to help resolve the sanitation workers’ strike, marching shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as the workers sought the city’s recognition of their union, AFSCME Local 1733. He was the co-founder and longtime leader of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and a co-founder of the Free South Africa Movement(FSAM) that launched the successful anti-apartheid campaign in the United States. For more than half a century, Lucy was a voice for social justice and worker freedom, one that echoed here and around the world. He was the first African American president of Public Services International (PSI), the world’s largest union federation, and served on the executive council of the AFL-CIO, the federation’s highest decision-making body. He served on the boards...